Abhismita Sen
[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women,” said Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. The empowerment of women has emerged as a sine qua non of progress in recent times.
The 2013 Report “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), noted that India is ranked 136 among 186 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI).
The related Gender Inequality Index ranked India at 132 and the Inequality Adjusted HDI rank was 91, as measured by this composite index of reproductive health, years of schooling, parliamentary representation, and participation in the labor market.
The 2011 Human Development Report “Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All” offers important new contributions to the global dialogue on this challenge, showing how sustainability is inextricably linked to basic questions of equity – that is, of fairness and social justice and of greater access to a better quality of life.Sustainability is not exclusively or even primarily an environmental issue, as the report so persuasively argues. It is fundamentally about how we choose to live our lives. There must be an awareness that everything this generation does has consequences for the 7 billion of us here today, as well as for the billions more who will follow, for centuries to come.
Major disparities in power shape these patterns. New analysis shows how power imbalances and gender inequalities at the national level are linked to reduced access to clean water and improved sanitation, land degradation and deaths due to indoor and outdoor air pollution, amplifying the effects associated with income disparities.
Gender inequalities also interact with environmental outcomes and make them worse. At the global level, governance arrangements often weaken the voices of developing countries and exclude marginalized groups.
Women in poor countries are disproportionately involved in subsistence farming and water collection, they face greater adverse consequences of environmental degradation. Many indigenous peoples also rely heavily on natural resources and live in ecosystems especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as small, island developing States, arctic regions and high altitudes.
According to a study by UNICEF, the principal collectors of water in an Indian household are women between the ages of 15 to 35 years collecting about 192 liters of water a day for an average household.
Girls are more often adversely affected because they are more likely to combine resource collection and schooling. Access to clean water and improved sanitation is also especially important for girls’ education, affording them health gains, time savings and privacy.
Historically, women’s intimate knowledge of nature has helped to sustain life. With colonial intervention and capitalist development, production in traditional societies was disrupted. It resulted in a capitalist economy dominated by men in charge of production of exchange-commodities, while women were pushed increasingly into the domestic sphere, responsible mainly for reproducing the workforce and social relations. Under the capitalist system, reproduction is subordinate to production and the sustainability of nature is ignored.
Women have long been neglected in the process of development; a secondary role is usually assigned to them whether in taking part in crucial issues related to development as beneficiaries of the process itself. Women’s participation in development is a positive concept, related to their ambitions and aspirations that symbolize their conviction about their personalities in relation to society.
An analysis of the past efforts at development of women only reflects discontent with respect to their status and position. A host of realities ranging from pervasive poverty to lack of dignity and economic independence become evident. Sustainable development therefore directly reinforces permeation of quality in developmental efforts related to women, with pronounced concern for justice, equality and economic freedom for women.
The Gender Inequality Index (GII), updated this year for 145 countries, shows how reproductive health constraints contribute to gender inequality. This is important because in countries where effective control of reproduction is universal, women have fewer children, with attendant gains for maternal and child health and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
For instance, in Cuba, Mauritius, Thailand and Tunisia, where reproductive healthcare and contraceptives are readily available, fertility rates are below two births per woman. However, substantial unmet need persists worldwide, and evidence suggests that if all women could exercise reproductive choice, population growth would slow enough to bring greenhouse gas emissions below current levels.
The GII also focuses on women’s participation in political decision-making, highlighting that women lag behind men across the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States. This has important implications for sustainability and equity. Because women often shoulder the heaviest burden of resource collection and are the most exposed to indoor air pollution, they are often more affected than men by decisions related to natural resources. Recent studies reveal that not only is women’s participation important but also how they participate – and how much.
In addition, because women often show more concern for the environment, support pro-environmental policies and vote for pro-environmental leaders, their greater involvement in politics and in non-governmental organizations could result in environmental gains, with multiplier effects across all the Millennium Development Goals.
These arguments are not new, but they reaffirm the value of expanding women’s effective freedoms. Thus, women’s participation in decision-making has both intrinsic value and instrumental importance in addressing equity and environmental degradation.
The government of India had floated zealously its grand ideas for the country by declaring the year 2001 as Women’s Empowerment Year, with a focus on achieving the “vision in the new century of a nation where women are equal partners with men”.
What followed was a spate of programs and schemes with fine names: Swashakti and Stree Shakti for women’s empowerment; Swayam Siddha to benefit nearly 100,000 women through microcredit programs, Balika Samrudhi Yojana for the girl child and a number of other projects, doubtlessly launched with the intention of creating a greater common good.
In contrast to the tragedies of communities affected by drought, flood or civil conflict, the poverty, powerlessness and ill health which accompany illiteracy are not easily captured on the camera and brought to the attention of international public opinion. Today, 125 million primary school age children are not in school in India; most of them are girls.
The current literacy rate for women in India stands at 65.46%, compared to 80% for males. Efforts are, however, being made to raise standards for the girl child. There are several programs being undertaken.
Women are the major contributors in terms of economic output, but their contribution still remains invisible. Men and women are not equally distributed across the types of work.
Women are concentrated in the primary sector and in unskilled and marginal work. Ninety-five percent of women, as against 89% men, are engaged in un-organized sectors, and most are found in rural areas. According to the 2001 census, there are 90 million women in the workforce.
Industries that employ more women than men include domestic services, beedi (traditional cigarette) manufacturing, and spinning and weaving. Women also constitute a majority of the workforce employed as nurses, ayahs (domestic servants), paramedics and technical workers. Their contribution goes unnoticed as most of the times they are involved as unpaid or home-based workers, who often get counted as non-working housewives.
In her paper on land laws and gender equity, Professor Bina Aggarwal points out that women are much more dependent on agricultural livelihoods. Over the years, while the male workers have been moving to non-agricultural arenas, women have remained where they were, owing to their lower mobility, lower education and fewer assets.
She notes, “Firstly there is systematic bias against the women and female children’s sharing of benefits from the male controlled resources – women without independent resources are highly vulnerable to poverty and destitution in case of divorce or widowhood. They often need titles to avail credit facilities.”
Eco-feminist movements have been formed in India with a view to creating a social movement where women contributed towards protecting the environment. The Chipko movement in the Himalayas in the 1970s, in which village women hugged the trees to protect them from being felled, gave a new meaning and momentum to environmental activism in the country. In other parts of the world too, women have taken an inspiring lead in protecting the environment, such as Wangari Maathai in Kenya, Rigoberta Menchu in Guatemala and Marina Silva in Brazil, to name just a few.
Sadly, while Chipko received wide media attention at the time, the so-called eco-feminist movement slowly but surely died away. Women and the environment are mankind’s greatest assets.It is time we worked towards the well being of both. The state of the environment impacts everyone. However, initiatives take on a different connotation if aimed at women in urban India as opposed to rural Indian women. To be successful, programs must be sensitive to varied cultural, complex, physical, and sociological differences.
Women, in order to be effective managers, must have secure rights to land and other natural resources and access to credit and training. There must be full integration in the selection and development of technologies applied to communities, full participation in the design and implementation of training and involvement in businesses that promote sustainable production. Research must be conducted on macro effects on micro conditions for women.
Institutions must involve women at national and grassroots levels. If urbanization is the world’s future, we must design urban environments and services in ways that will give women greater security, and educate and involve citizens in this cause. A Commonwealth initiative bringing together our great cities to collaborate on this issue would be timely. Under the UNDP, Self Help Groups (SHGs) have been constituted.
Efforts must be made to generate awareness about renewable resources. Government ministries can do a lot if the people of a certain area contact their local representatives and together work out a solution. The political process can create momentum if the SHGs establish links with local-self government bodies.
In fact, 10,000 SHG members were elected to the local bodies in 1997 elections. An increase in awareness levels about society led to laying roads, planting trees, conserving environment, construction of water harvesting structures, donations to the victims of natural calamities, campaign against eradication of social evils like forced marriages. All we can hope for in the present context is a better future for womenfolk across the globe and an increased sense of awareness at all levels.
License: Asia Times
